Thank Goodness the Terrorist Wasn't American. Oh, Wait.

Jonah Goldberg was up bright and early this morning with hisobligatory post on how liberals will be disappointed that the Times Square bomber turned out not to be a white American with a conservative axe to grind. It's classic Goldberg in all respects. The false magnanimity ("Now, which side is 'worse' in their schadenfreude or I-told-you-sos doesn't really interest me right now..."), the undocumented assertions ("A lot of liberals seem very keen to minimize or dismiss the reality of Islamic terrorism while working devilishly hard to create a false reality that the real threat is from American citizens American "rightwingers."), the drumbeat hyperbole ("glibly announces," "disgustingly undemocratic," "eagerly hyped," "bully it into silence," etc., etc.).

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Goldberg, to his credit, always grounds his opinions in facts — lots of them. The same cannot be said of many writers, left and right. But the problem is that Goldberg's facts are always highly selective, chosen to bolster a premeditated conclusion. So, yes, Mayor Bloomberg guessed the bomber might be homegrown... because that's what the investigation was suggesting at the time. Yes, the DHS under Obama has emphasized that terrorism may come from within our borders... while simultaneously vastly increasing our direct interdiction of terrorist networks abroad. (Though speaking of that supposedly chimerical homegrown terror, I recall a U.S. citizen shooting up Fort Hood a few months back, and another flying his plane into a federal building not long after.)

These one-sided facts serve a purpose, as Goldberg well knows: They give his voice a sense of authority... one that allows him to spew the preposterous charges that end the column. Thus, suggestions that the Times Square bomb could be American-made are, in fact, devious attempts to silence critics of the administration: "They're saying, 'You people need to shut up because you're aiding and abetting terrorists.' They're also trying to say to independents: 'If you think the right-wingers are persuasive, you need to think again. They're all just mouthpieces and stalking horses for the homegrown terrorists and the mentally deranged.'" And, of course, the administration's suppression of free speech has the further devious effect of drawing our eyes away from real terrorists to focus on American ghosts: "It's dangerous because it causes the country to look for terrorists where they aren't while telling them not to look for them where they are."

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Reading a Goldberg column often feels like an otherworldly experience, because in a sense it is. He writes from a planet that lacks complexity, ambiguity, and individuality. He lives there, and he would like you to live there, too. What he doesn't want you to do is turn around and look at the world you live in. Because, as he's already been forced to admit, this act of terror in fact washomegrown. Because, as he's already acknowledged in a related post, it's unwise to divide terror into foreign and homegrown camps to begin with. And because, much as he would like the Times Square investigation to become the symbol of a failing administration, it is already quite obvious that it will be seen by most Americans as a resounding success.

I suspect Goldberg is also hoping you have forgotten that the last time an Islamic terrorist boarded a plane on U.S. soil, it didn't turn out so well. And that it wasn't a Democrat living in the White House at the time, either.